Your Ultimate Guide to the Best Agatha Christie Books

Agatha Christie is not just a famous mystery writer, she’s the best selling novelist of all time with over two billion copies sold and a massive fandom that continues long after her death. But if you decide you’d like to see what Christie has to offer, with over 60 novels and 14 short story collections, getting started can be a daunting task. We’ve compiled some basic information about her writing, the best Agatha Christie books, which ones to dip your toe in with, and what to read (and in what order) when you want to dive deeper.

What You Need to Know About Agatha Christie Books

Here’s the basics you need to know if you’re going to pick up an Agatha Christie book.

This isn’t where to go for a diverse group of characters. Christie writes very simple, straightforward prose with a focus on plot and dialogue. They are not procedurals exactly, since they rarely focus on a professional police officer or detective. (Even Poirot is a former detective.) Instead the clues are compiled from conversations and plot twists.

She has two major series and another lesser-known series. Each follows the cases of a specific detective or team of detectives. These don’t necessarily have to be read in order, though it may be helpful to start with the first one to get yourself properly introduced to the main character(s). Many of her books and stories have been adapted for television and movies.

Need a guide to recurring characters in Agatha Christie novels? Here’s some of the most important ones.

Hercule Poirot

Poirot is best known for his iconic mustaches and using his “little grey cells” to solve the most puzzling cases from the right set of clues. A Belgian private detective who used to be a policeman, Poirot is often accompanied by Captain Arthur Hastings, who acts as the Watson to his Holmes. Poirot loves to gather all the suspects and slowly explain how he’s solved the case. Many Poirot mysteries involve exotic locales and rich people, since Poirot himself is a wealthy man who keeps insisting he is retired. There are over 30 Poirot novels and over 50 short stories.

Miss Marple

Jane Marple is an amateur detective who also happens to be a sweet little old lady from the village St. Mary Mead. Miss Marple never married, has few relatives, and never had to work for a living. She’s unexpectedly brilliant but enjoys her camouflage as a harmless old woman. Most Miss Marple novels give you a look at village life with a more typical cast of characters. She is often a minor character who may not appear for the first half of the book, and when she does appear be prepared for her to be wrapped in a pink fuzzy woolen shawl. She first appeared in Christie’s short stories but eventually was featured in a dozen novels.

Tommy and Tuppence

This is the only series you may want to read in order, since the couple meets as carefree young people in the first novel and are several decades into their marriage by their last. Tommy and Tuppence start out post-World War I, full of excitement but without anything interesting to do, and stumble into a career looking for adventure and solving crimes. They appear in four novels and one book of short stories.

Other Recurring Agatha Christie Characters

Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp are regular foils to Poirot, not quite bumbling police detectives, but reliant on Poirot to help them crack the case.

Ariadne Oliver is a famous mystery novelist whose books feature a foreign detective…hmm, why does that sound familiar? Oliver is not a detective herself, but a colorful side character who gets to stand in for Christie, usually in Poirot novels.

The Best Agatha Christie Books

If you’re only going to dabble in Christie’s work, the best Agatha Christie books to try are the most popular ones with the most lasting cultural impact. They’re full of ingenious plots and endings so memorable that they’ve become part of the literary canon.

In addition to its classic plot, this book has an exotic, quintessential setting on a luxury train. Poirot is traveling back to London and encounters a passenger who believes his life is in danger and tries to hire Poirot to protect him, but Poirot refuses. Sure enough, the man turns up dead and Poirot has to figure out which of the passengers in the first class car is responsible.

This Agatha Christie book is known for its story where characters on an island are picked off one by one. You may have seen alternate editions with different titles; more than one exists but more than one are also horribly racially insensitive.

Those titles come from the central poem that’s an important plot device, and you may find either “Indian” or “Soldier,” depending on which version you read.

Strong Standalone Agatha Christie Books

A standalone mystery that lets you dive in deeply to one strange family. Patriarch Aristide Leonides is dead, his much younger wife the prime suspect, but this family abounds with secrets and resentments, including a 13-year-old girl who fancies herself a detective. This is a family full of strong characters. As a reader you get to know them all really well. Suspicion is on pretty much everyone, and it’s got a thrill of an ending.

This Agatha Christie novel, which also had a popular film adaptation in the ’70s, takes place on a luxury cruise in Egypt where an heiress who is too beautiful, too rich, and too perfect finds herself a target of the other scheming passengers.

This one takes a Rashomon-style approach, with Poirot investigating a cold case and all five suspects writing up their own version of events. I actually got one twist here, but I missed the second one. With a limited cast of characters and a very clear chain of events, this is one of her simplest and most rewarding plots.

This has perhaps the most interesting setup in all of Christie’s novels.

I also recommend reading A Caribbean Mystery and Nemesis in a row, especially since the latter refers to events of the former quite often. Instead of being a secondary character, here Miss Marple is front and center.

Jessica Woodbury: Jessica Woodbury's professional life has taken her to prisons, classrooms, strip clubs, and her living room couch. After years as a Public Defender in the South, she now lives in Boston with her two small children. Cursed with a practical streak, she always wanted to pursue music or writing but instead majored in Biochemistry because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. These days she does absolutely nothing with science or law and instead spends too much time oversharing on the internet. She has a soft spot for crime novels and unreliable narrators. And the strip club gig was totally as a lawyer, she swears.
Blog: Don't Mind the Mess
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